There is something compelling about repetition in art. Some of my favourite songs go on forever, repeating the same beats endlessly, some of my favourite paintings are eternally repeated patterns with only minor variations, and some of my favourite quotes say the same thing twice. Or at least seem to.
Here are five quotes that work because they repeat. Two are from the famous, one is a throwaway piece of TV dialog, and two are just really pithy things that friends and colleagues once said.
Keep on keeping on
This quote’s origin goes back to the beginning of the twenty century, and passes through the civil rights movement in the US, but is most commonly associated with Bob Dylan’s song Tangled Up In Blue:
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue.
Good artists borrow, and Bob Dylan steals I guess.
The phrasing is so evocative and captures the mundane heroics of staying with it and not quitting. It’s not relentless and unforgiving, like pushing a rock up a hill, but it’s hard. It’s hard, but me you and Bob will get through if we can just keep on keeping on.
What would we win if we won?
This was a line of dialog form This Town – a recent BBC drama. I didn’t much like the show but I love the quote. Two characters are hiding from the police in an outside toilet after riots blow up in their suburb. One is thrilled about the riots, the police are heavy-handed and abusive in this area and they deserve it, but the other asks ‘What would we win if we won?’
A good question – if your car has been burnt out and business destroyed, what exactly have you won? Was the cost of winning worth the victory?
When you make a change, things change
This was said by a friend when she got divorced from her husband after he was sent to prison. It was a terrible time and the details of the situation (which I won’t share as it is not my story) are worse still. We sat in her garden talking to her and she was telling us about learning to play the guitar, and said ‘when you make a change, things change.’
It didn’t matter what changed, the only important thing was that things could change. For her, at that time, that was all that was important.
Hard work is hard work
This was said by my wife’s old boss, a dynamic and slightly scary headteacher, who once grounded a plane with an anxiety attack – he normally caused anxiety in other people so that incident was particularly ironic.
My wife worked in his school for several years, and the staff, lead by this headteacher, built the school from the ground up, in one of the most deprived areas of the district, and due to everyone’s dedication, that school became one of the best in the country. Painted on the walls all around the school were inspirational quotes, and the head loved repeat this particular slogan to the students – ‘hard work is hard work.’
And indeed it is. Don’t be surprised that it’s tough. Don’t be surprised that it’s tiring or stressful. If you want good things then work hard, but understand that it won’t be pleasant, and also understand that it will be worth it. For the students in Bradford, their only option for a better life was through their own efforts. No-one was going to do it for them and they needed to understand that. And they did. And they succeeded.
Wherever you go, there you are.
This doesn’t repeat in quite the same way as the other quotes, but it does have that quality of repetition. This is the title of a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness – I haven’t read this one myself (it’s too secular for my tastes), but it was very popular a few years back, and kick started the mindfulness movement that is still very much in vogue today.
It’s a fabulous title, and captures the quality of acceptance – you have to start where you are. It’s true that ‘when you make a change, things change,’ but some things don’t, and you have to sit with them and work with them. There’s no choice.
When we moved to Australia, seven years ago, we took apart our entire life, and when we washed up to Brisbane we had to build everything up again. Jobs, housing, schools, friends – everything was started again. But even though this was the biggest of all changes, we recreated a lot of our old patterns. My wife still works too hard, my daughter’s bedroom is still a mess, and I’m still distracted and slightly chaotic. We moved to Australia but we took ourselves with us.
Facts aren’t facts anymore, but the truth is always the truth.
And a bonus quote. I’ve followed the same pattern and made this up. By repeating the same words I’ve sprinkled the dust of profundity over a mundane sentence – and the trick works. It might be the wisest thing I’ve ever said, or it could be utterly meaningless. Chances are it’s somewhere in between.
Photo by Mitchell Griest on Unsplash
